Third International Symposium on Computers and Archaeology

Rome, 22-25 November 1995

Maria EconomouPitt Rivers Museum
University of Oxford

Computers have been used in archaeology since at least the 1960s in the USA,
the UK, France, and West Germany, but their general diffusion throughout the
discipline was slow until the 1980s. In the last decade information technology
(IT) has been widely used by archaeologists, opening up new possibilities and
reshaping their work in a variety of areas: in the field, during excavations and
surveys; during the post-excavation process, for analysing data and constructing
interpretation models; in exhibition and public presentation, after the analysis
of the excavation archive has been completed, and in archaeological teaching and
training.

A large number of archaeologists, museum professionals, conservators, and
academics from all over Europe gathered in Rome in November to exchange views
about the ways IT affects their work. The Italian capital, where a rich cultural
heritage blends frequently with the latest technological developments and modern
design, provided the perfect setting for the III International Symposium on
Computers and Archaeology. Conferences of this kind are important for bringing
together professionals and researchers working on cutting edge areas to discuss
obstacles and opportunities.

Most European countries were represented at the meeting, although the Italian
participants formed the majority. The USA, Mexico, and Israel also had a small
presence. The symposium was organized by the Instituto per l'Archeologia Etrusco
Italica-Consiglio Nationale delle Ricerche together with the Accademia Nazionale
dei Lincei, La Association Internationale Archéologie et Informatique,
and the Universi di Roma "La Sapienza". Dr Paola Moscati (Instituto
per l'Archeologia Etrusco Italica), the scientific secretary and the organizing
soul of the meeting, did an excellent job ensuring that everything ran smoothly.
After the opening talks, two concurrent sessions were run, most of which were
held at the well-equipped offices of the Consiglio Nationale delle Ricerche
(C.N.R.) and were interpreted simultaneously in Italian, English, and French.

Geographical Information Systems

As with most recent meetings (such as the 'Computer Applications and
Quantitative Methods in Archaeology' (CAA)), great emphasis was placed on
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and the need to integrate GIS studies
into mainstream archaeology, as well as correlate them with a sound theoretical
framework. Under the theme of "Topographic and Urbanistic Studies"
several speakers explored the possibilities of IT for monitoring archaeological
sites, as well as putting new ones on the map. For example, Zoran Stancic
(Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana) talked about the use of GIS
and satellite images for cultural resource management in the Dalmatian coast;
Dominic Powlesland presented a collaborative project of the Getty Conservation
Institute with NASA which experimented with the analysis of satellite images for
monitoring world heritage sites. Using the major Anasazi complex at the Chaco
Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico to test several methods proved
that, because of the resolution of most digital data collected, the possibility
of using air- or remote-sensing data to undertake automatic global monitoring of
anything other than large scale damage to World Heritage sites remains a dream.

Juan Barcel and Maria Pallares (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona) took a
critical and healthy look at the opportunities that GIS offers archaeologists
and stressed the need to move from visualization to explanation. They reminded
that GIS is just another software tool, whose potential should not be overrated.

A number of speakers referred to the creation of electronic maps and historic
Atlases, ranging from an Archaeological Map of Italy (Giovanni Azzena, Universi
di Roma "La Sapienza"), to specific sites, such as the Corinth
Computer Project, which aims to create an electronic archive of information
about the successive ancient cities of Corinth (David Gilman Romano, University
of Pennsylvania).

Many of the papers, focused on the use of databases for administering and
managing the vast and often geographically dispersed work of the various Soprintendenzae
and archaeological units, as well as for creating inventories of cultural
objects. Portable computers can now assist field work, while directly
transferring information to a central office for further analysis and study
(Rubi Cohen, Israel Antiquities Authority). After the initial period of
experimentation and innovation, computers seem to have currently spread from
universities and research institutions to most excavation units and
administration centres. The collaboration of a Computer Science Institute
(Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas, Heraklion, Crete) with two Greek
Antiquities Ephorates in Heraklion (13th Ephorate of Byzantine and
Post-Byzantine Antiquities and 23rd Ephorate of Classical and Prehistorical
Antiquities, respectively), for example, led to the creation of DELTOS, a
documentation system for the administration of site monuments and preserved
buildings. The system's data management functions, complex search features, and
multimedia capabilities have greatly facilitated administrative documentation,
and addressed effectively the archaeological needs for cartographic, geometric,
and photographic representation. DELTOS is being used as a building block in
configuring a much needed geographically distributed national record of
monuments in Greece.

The possibilities offered by the Internet and the World Wide Web were discussed
by several speakers. The Internet is increasingly being used for academic
purposes, offering wider access to research tools and distributing specialized
information. A number of research databases are currently accessible on line,
such as the East Mediterranean Pottery project, an Israeli initiative which
supports queries of distributed databases over the Internet, an online database
from Milan on amber objects, and another from the Tor Vergata University (Rome)
on ancient coins. Michael Heyworth (Council for British Archaeology), Seamus
Ross (British Academy), and Julian Richards (University of York) described a
joint project, also involving various British university archaeology
departments, to establish an electronic journal for archaeology. 'Internet
Archaeology' (http://intarch.york.ac.uk)
will be fully refereed and will strive to set an academic standard comparable
with the discipline's traditional print journals.

In a part of the wider session entitled "Data dissemination: Networks,
Museums and education, Publications", P. Archelin (C.N.R. France) argued
that archaeological publication is in crisis and proposed the use of CD-ROMs for
facilitating the dissemination of data in archaeology. A.C. Wolle (University of
Southampton) discussed the opportunities which her work has demonstrated for the
electronic publication and dissemination of excavation archives using Microcosm,
an open hypermedia system developed by the University of Southampton.

Museums and Multimedia

Several presentations in this session examined computer applications in museums.
Multimedia programs have opened a whole range of new routes in collections
management and documentation, in some cases moving ahead from basic
documentation to support and record the complex processes involved in the
interpretation of cultural information. In this direction, A. Drandaki presented
a collaborative project between the Benaki Museum, Athens and the University of
Westminster, London which aims to develop a hypermedia museum documentation
system, incorporating the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) encoding
support. SGML is machine, system, and application independent and therefore
ideal for encoding complicated museum information and making it available
on-line. The paper of M. Christoforaki, P. Constantopoulos, and M. Doerr
presented another initiative in modelling information for cultural
documentation; this comes from the Institute of Computer Science in Heraklion
(mentioned above) which is developing the CLIO system in collaboration with the
Benaki Museum and the Historical Museum of Crete. By organizing information
according to a specifically designed semantic model and by defining a conceptual
modelling framework, CLIO is able to serve as a hypermedia scientific catalogue
of museum artefacts, moving beyond basic documentation and administrative
purposes.

Interactive multimedia also offers impressive opportunities for archaeological
interpretation and public presentation. Several fascinating applications were
presented in this area, ranging from the virtual reconstruction of the tomb of
Horembeb by the Archaeological Museum of Bologna, to a multimedia itinerary in
Southern Etruria (Divisione Beni Culturali, Napoli). This widening of the
perspective from the computer screen (with high-quality graphics and video) to
encompass the user and the surrounding environment, was the concern of a number
of papers in this session, stressing the need for careful assessment and
evaluation of these programs as interpretative tools. Although multimedia
interactive kiosks seem to have captured the imagination of museum professionals
and visitors alike, not many studies have been undertaken to evaluate the use of
such programs as integral parts of museum exhibitions. Maria Economou
(University of Oxford), along with M.L. Pagliani (Istituto Beni Culturali,
Bologna) and S. Santoro (University of Bologna), presented studies of assessing
computer usage in a museum environment, reflecting the variety of interpretative
approaches and the wide range of parameters and particularities influencing each
application.

Several papers, such as those given by Nicholas Zarifis (Archaeological
Institute of the Dodecanese, Greece) and Douwtje van der Meulen (Ashmolean
Museum, Oxford) touched upon issues of human resources and the management of
change, referring to the problems of introducing computer technology to
traditional institutions and the training of personnel. Small, well-defined,
applications and projects might not be exciting for furthering research in the
field but, as was evident in this meeting, often seem to be well-suited to fit
the specific purposes of cultural institutions and can be useful tools in the
hands of archaeologists, conservators, and teachers.

Concluding Remarks

Generally, an amount of healthy scepticism was evident at the conference, with
several archaeologists and researchers reporting the limitations and
shortcomings of the technology, which is not a panacea and often creates as many
problems as it attempts to solve. Another feature of the symposium was the
concern expressed about the future and long-term preservation of electronic
media and the frequency with which the technology changes. Many participants
voiced their doubts and hesitations about using CD-ROMs to store and record
cultural information. Will these still be available in the future and will they
be compatible with the new systems that are constantly being developed? Although
nobody can guarantee the longevity and future of compact discs, they are
nevertheless becoming a versatile tool for distributing and archiving
information. One of the reasons for their popularity is the fact that the
Internet and the WWW, despite their many promises, are still very slow, badly
organized, and often chaotic.

The closing session was held at the attractive surroundings of the Villa
Farnesina, on the south bank of the Tiber. This centred on knowledge modelling
and the formalization of archaeological interpretation and included papers
presented by researchers with the greatest authority and longest experience in
the field, like Jean-Claude Gardin, Tito Orlandi, and Jim Doran. Although not
easily accessible and understandable to the uninitiated, this is still an area
which attracts a lot of interest, since the logical way in which computers work
has encouraged archaeologists to explore ways of encoding complex processes and
to formalize interpretative reasoning. Seamus Ross spoke of the benefits of the
formalization of knowledge to artefact classification, arguing that despite the
strong criticisms made by those with little experience developing intelligent
applications, expert systems can be of great help to archaeology. For clearly
defined and well-documented sets of objects, expert systems and artificial
intelligence offer promising results, although not much has been delivered yet.

Although the sheer number of papers meant that most speakers where only allotted
15 minutes or so, the organizers did make it possible for a significant number
of projects to be presented. The limited time given to the speakers might be one
of the reasons that most papers were descriptive and technical, without the
greater depth required to discuss the issues arising from the use of the
technology.

Despite these few organizational complexities, overall it was a successful and
well-attended meeting with a very wide range of papers covering most issues in
this field. It brought together a large number of archaeologists and museum
professionals from several countries and encouraged the exchange of ideas and
the sharing of experiences in an area where the rapid technological developments
make communication vital.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr Seamus Ross, Douwtje van der Meulen, Anja Wolle, and
Maria Christoforaki for reading earlier versions of this report. I am grateful
to the Craven Committee, the Office for Humanities Communication, and Linacre
College of the University of Oxford for their financial support which enabled me
to participate at the conference.